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Show Off Your Smarts!

You guys sent in some great responses to last week's challenge on myths and urban legends. For this week's challenge, I'd like to see winter holiday-related facts. This will give you a chance to share facts about holiday traditions, movies, weird history, etc. I'll get it started with the following story about one of the most successful Christmas gag gifts in history:

Ever wonder where pet rocks came from? Well the genius behind this moronic craze is Gary Dahl, a California ad exec. Gary came up with the idea one evening in 1975 while sitting around at a bar with some of his buddies, pontificating about the hassle of owning a pet and jokingly proposing rocks as the perfect low-maintenance pal. Still amused by the idea the next morning, Dahl created a prototype, complete with carrying case and the Pet Rock Training Manual. In August of that year, he took the kit to the annual gift show in NYC, where Neiman Marcus (strange match) bought all 500 of them. By the end of October, Dahl was shipping 10,000 pet rocks every day! By the end of the holiday season, he'd used up three tons of stone from Rosarita Beach in Baja, Mexico. The fad quickly waned the next year, but not before Dahl made millions off of the idea.

Okay, now it's your turn to make us all a little smarter! I'll highlight some of myÂ favorites on Friday.

Also on Mental Floss:

DID YOU KNOW? Marlon Brando hated memorizing lines so much that he posted cue cards everywhere to help him get through scenes.
He even asked for lines to be written on an actress's posterior. (That request was denied.)